


Gone

by PrincessBethoc



Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-07
Updated: 2019-01-07
Packaged: 2019-10-05 20:52:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17332151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrincessBethoc/pseuds/PrincessBethoc
Summary: Sometimes, getting baby Sabrina to sleep was an ordeal.





	Gone

“Oh, for the love of Satan,” moaned Zelda. Every half hour, it seemed, Sabrina cried herself awake. As much as Zelda Spellman felt for her niece, she couldn’t help but have it in the back of her mind that she, too, needed to sleep. Still, she went to Sabrina. She took the child’s tiny hand and tried to coax her back to sleep.

It was the sudden absence of her parents that had done this to the girl. Zelda knew it. There was nothing else wrong. She was no fool; she had checked every possible source of the baby’s upset, and found nothing. It was all she could do to be there, to keep Sabrina safe and warm. As silly and feeble as she knew she sounded, Zelda’s last resort was song. The mortal lullabies had worked for Diana, so it might work now, for her. “Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are,” Zelda sang, but Sabrina only cried harder. “Alright,” she conceded. “Alright, you don’t particularly like that one.”

Zelda gently rubbed Sabrina’s tummy; it didn’t seem to calm her at all. She concluded that she did it to soothe herself more than Sabrina.

“Rockabye baby in the treetops, when the wind blows the cradle will rock, when the bough breaks–”

It drew an anguished scream from Sabrina, and Zelda stopped abruptly.

“You’re right. That one is a little miserable,” she sighed. Sabrina’s cries pierced Zelda’s heart. “Come on, Sabrina, you must be exhausted. You need to sleep, my dear niece.” Zelda almost laughed at herself. Trying to reason with an infant. Was she losing it? Was the grief and stress finally getting to her? “Hush, little baby, don’t say a word, Zelda’s going to buy you a mockingbird,” she sang, rather desperate now. “And if that mockingbird won’t sing, Zelda’s going to buy you a diamond ring.”

Sabrina’s legs moved towards her chest as she wailed. Zelda leaned forwards with her head in her hands for a moment.

“You do _not_ want a diamond ring. Noted.”

It was the lack of sleep. That was why she was talking to a baby like she could give her a conversation. She was cracking up. She wasn’t built for this. This was Diana and Edward’s job. Maybe if Sabrina was with Diana’s family, she would be sound asleep right now. Maybe the baby was better with the mortal side of her family.

But she was the image of Edward. She was all she had left of Edward that wasn’t cold books and inanimate heirlooms. Sabrina was a Spellman. She was even promised to the Dark Lord as a condition of her parents’ marriage, so how on Earth could she go to Diana’s family?

“Please stop crying, Sabrina,” Zelda pleaded. “Please. I beg of you.”

Before she knew it, Zelda was crying, too. She was crying with exhaustion and pain and helplessness – she had no control. This wasn’t a situation she could steer.

However, she knew she had to be stronger than this. It was her duty to be here for Sabrina, always. “Sing me a song of a lad that is gone,” Zelda murmured the song through her tears, “say, could that lad be I?” Sabrina looked at Zelda like she was confused, but her cries were subtly less high-pitched. “Merry of soul, he sailed on a day, over the sea to Skye.”

Sabrina stared intently at her. Only a child of Edward’s would prefer the poetry of Robert Louis Stevenson to traditional nursery rhymes.

“Do you like that one, hmm?” Zelda asked softly. With a sense of relief, she picked Sabrina up, now that she was sure it wouldn’t worsen matters to do so. “Mull was astern, Rùm on the port, Eigg on the starboard bow, glory of youth glowed in his soul, where is that glory now?”

Though Sabrina was calming down, Zelda’s heart screamed out in pain. Where _was_ her brother now? Why was he not here, rocking his daughter to sleep himself? “Sing me a song of a lad that is gone, say, could that lad be I? Merry of soul, he sailed on a day, over the sea to Skye.” She smiled as Sabrina’s little fingers wrapped around Zelda’s curls, holding them tightly like a comfort blanket.

“Give me again all that was there, give me the sun that shone! Give me the eyes, give me the soul, give me the lad that is gone!”

Zelda wept. She did so silently, without fuss, but she wept like she had not even thought to since she was an infant herself. How could Edward die? How could he leave her to navigate this journey alone? Of course, he would argue that she was not alone, that she had Hilda and she had Ambrose, but that was not what she needed. Right now, as she held his child in her arms, she needed her brother, and he was not here. He was gone. Everything she had loved about that man was gone, never to be seen again – except, perhaps, in Sabrina Spellman.

“Sing me a song of a lad that is gone, say, could that lad be I? Merry of soul, he sailed on a day, over the sea to Skye.”

The baby was very nearly quiet. The cries were faint now, and her face was full of sleep and love and all that Zelda knew she could not have for herself at the moment. “Billow and breeze, islands and seas,” she crooned soothingly, “mountains of rain and sun.” Sabrina was breathing gently. She wailed no more. “All that was good, all that was fair, all that was me is…” Zelda was horrified by the knot of sorrow that strangled her words. “All that was me is gone…”

Sabrina slept. She slept like she dreamt of boats and fair seas, of islands and mountains, of glory and youth. Zelda stroked the baby’s forehead with the tips of her fingers. “Oh, my sweet, sweet girl,” she whispered. “I know I am not your mother. I will probably let you down more than once – this is all most unfamiliar to me – but please know I love you. Know I will do everything in my power to keep you safe and loved. Your mother and father are gone, you see, and I’m afraid you are stuck with me and your Aunt Hilda. I am so sorry. I can only promise that you will never want for love.”

Zelda placed Sabrina back down to sleep. “Sing me a song of a lad that is gone, say, could that lad be I? Merry of soul, he sailed on a day, over the sea to Skye.” She bent down and kissed the girl’s forehead, and silently made her way from the room. The tears still fell down her face, hot on her cheeks, but she could not make a sound.

She almost yelped with fright when she saw Hilda lingering at the nursery door; the only thing that stopped her was the knowledge that Sabrina was _finally_ sleeping. “Are you okay, Zelds?” asked Hilda, her voice a mere whisper in the darkness.

“I’m very tired,” Zelda replied. She was careful to keep the emotion out of her voice, for Hilda was grieving too, and did not need to hear about Zelda’s pain. “I must sleep while the baby is quiet.”

As she passed her sister, Hilda caught her hand and squeezed tightly. She knew. It was inevitable that she would see Zelda’s façade crack; she always did in the end. Hilda said nothing, but she put her arm around Zelda and walked her to bed, and held her hand until she slept. That was an act of kindness Zelda never allowed herself to forget – the night Hilda held her hand, without judgement and without question.


End file.
